#104 Prayer.
Tonight we watched a Nooma at church called Open. It was about how people pray. Like when someone they love is sick, they pray for healing and if that person isn’t healed, if they die, they think “where was God?” while some people are so happy because someone they love and prayed for was cured or “miraculously” healed. This is something I’ve always struggled to understand — how does prayer work if God’s going to do what God’s going to do? How can we wrap our minds around a God who loves us so unconditionally but would let a helpless baby die at birth, or let us, his children, die from disease and illness? It’s hard to understand. It’s so hard for us to understand, that I think we were never meant to.
Ben has always told me, “prayer doesn’t change God, it changes us,” which I am beginning to understand more all the time. Prayer is meant to be unending… We should be talking to God constantly, not making lists of things we want him to solve or change. It’s interesting that when Jesus knew he was going to die, he prayed for God to not let him die if it was possible, and when he realized God wasn’t going to save him from death he asked that whatever happened be for the best and in God’s divine plan. I wish I understood why bad things happen despite what we pray, but I am learning as I go that praying prepares us for the worst and brings us through to the other side a wiser, stronger person. Knowing that we’ve poured it all out to God is the only way to feel that we’ve made a connection, that we’re open to whatever He’s got planned. I think there’s a lot of comfort in that.
